Cancer of the Heart
by Position of Trust
Summary: Her unrequited love for a cruel former friend is threatening to break Hermione's heart, and the genius has to cope with the feeling of being second best.


_This is a bizarre little thing that came to me in a moment of madness. I decided to take a random line from a book (_The Oxford Murders _by Guillermo Martinez, if you're interested) and use it as the starting point for a story. The quote from the book is in bold. This story was written stream-of-consciousness. My beta spell-checked it, but apart from that, it is as I originally wrote it._

_Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, they belong to JK Rowling, and the opening line belongs to Guillermo Martinez. All the rest is mine, and much good may it do me._

Cancer of the Heart

"**Come on, let's go for a walk in the park," he said. "I've got a few moments before my student's lecture and I need a cigarette."**

He didn't wait for a reply, but rather stalked off, expecting me to follow, and it hit me again exactly how arrogant he was. When I didn't immediately run after him, he swung back round to face me, impatiently. He jerked his head in a gesture of irritation, and I felt resentment rising in my heart. He expected me to do as he wanted; to trot after him like a pet dog. The fact that I had fed this expectation by doing so for so long did not quell the bitterness, but rather made it worse. I had been foolish, very foolish, to let this man rule my life for so long.

When I finally moved to catch up to him, he smiled; it was the satisfied smile of a man who did not want to admit just how worried he had been. He offered me his arm, like the gentleman he was not, and I looped my arm through it, as I had done so many times in the past. The silence was not as companionable as it once would have been. It felt to me as if there were words unsaid, hanging between us and making it hard for us to even look at each other for very long. I wondered if it affected him. Probably not; he had never been very sensitive to other people's emotions.

We paused by the duck pond and he pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, extracted one and went rummaging in his coat for a lighter. He let out a long, relieved breath when he had finally lit the cigarette, and took a deep drag. I had not known he smoked. I would never have guessed. I did not approve, of course; perhaps that was why he had hidden the truth from me. But why show it now? Was it a sign, to show that he no longer cared for my censure?

"You shouldn't do that," I told him, trying to sound cheerful, to imitate the tone of my friendly admonitions at school, but failing. "You ought to know what it can do to you."

His head snapped up, and he glowered at me. "I do, and I don't care," he said, a dark look in his eyes. "I'm sick of _worrying_ about what's good or bad for me. I shouldn't have to do that any more. I've done what I was born to do, haven't I? So why should anyone care if I get cancer now?" His bitterness shocked me. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that people _did_ care, that he should not feel so hopeless, but I could not. I could not feel sympathy for him; he who ruled my heart but did not care for me.

I wanted to tell him that I cared. But I knew that he already knew, in his quiet, cruel way. He had been using that fact shamelessly for years now. He had overruled my good sense at school by playing with me, by pretending I _mattered_. He had talked me out of taking a job I wanted because it happened to be abroad, not – as I had fervently hoped and tried to fool myself into believing – because he wanted me to be near him, simply because, once again, he needed my brain to get the illustrious teaching post he now held. I hated him and I loved him; I envied him, though in my heart I knew that he had nothing worth envying.

He seemed to calm down, and then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a jewellery box. For one insane moment my heart raced. And he knew it; there was a cruel look in his eyes, much as I wanted to pretend I hadn't seen it. He knew the hold he had on me. He was playing with me again. He wanted to hurt me. I searched my mind, wanting to assure myself that he had not always been this cruel. It had been the war that had done this to him; he was hurting, and the only person in his power he could vent his pain on was me.

He opened the box and showed me the ring. A large diamond glittered. It was unoriginal and far too ostentatious. He was rich, but he lacked the innate sense of taste that those who are born rich possess. For a minute I was startled that I was actually comparing him unfavourably to others; I, who had always set him on a pedestal, looked at him as my model for what a man should be. Maybe, maybe it meant I was coming back to myself, that his spell was finally breaking. But if that was so, why did it hurt me so much to look at this ridiculous ring, so obviously meant for another, so cruelly thrown in my face?

"What do you think of it?" he asked me, his eyes searching my face for any sign of emotion. "Do you think Luna will like it?"

_No_, I wanted to say. _It is hideous. No woman would want it. Even she, for all her dreaminess, has a certain amount of taste._ But I held my tongue. Whatever I said, he would have interpreted it as jealousy. And perhaps he would not have been wrong. He knew that I would gladly accept it, were it offered to me. He knew that as well as I did. I had no idea if Luna would like it. How could I? But I was his _friend_, tied to him by an obligation over a decade old, and I gave the reply that a friend was expected to give.

"Of course she'll like it," I told him, trying to force a smile. I could tell by the look on his face, by the angles in his smile, that I had not convinced him. He _knew_. But he would no more say so than I would. It was a silent torture, inescapable because neither of us had ever acknowledged its existence.

"Glad you think so," he replied, his lips curling into a smile that was not quite a smile. If anything, it put me in mind of Malfoy smirking. Then, still more cruelly, he continued, "I suppose it won't be long before Blaise is asking you the same question, will it, Hermione?"

"I… don't know," I faltered. He must have known that Blaise was only a distraction. We had been together for a while, but I could never manage to feel the same for him as I did for my oldest friend, my oldest love. Oh, he loved me, I was sure of that, but did I love him? It was something that I did not and could not know, since my only experience of love was this unrequited emotion that brought me only pain. Love was only a weakness; something that attached you to that person and stole your will. Love for this man had destroyed me. How could I imagine loving another?

He just shrugged. He didn't show any signs of knowing that the question and the answer had been unwelcome, or that thinking of love caused me pain. Either he hadn't noticed or he just didn't care, and I was at a loss to know which was worse. He breathed a small plume of smoke from his nostrils with a satisfied sigh, and returned the box to his pocket. I watched him. I looked at him as I had never looked at him before, and I wondered why, of all the men in the world, I had fallen in love with him.

"I've got to go now," he said, and his voice held no regret. I was there to distract him in his spare time, and be discarded when he was busy. I either had to accept that, or keep away from him. "The students will be waiting." The job he would never have got without me was far more important to him than I was. Whatever I did, and whatever the comparison, I was always second best.

"Go, then," I said, trying not to show my feelings. I probably failed. He snorted, and then he dropped the cigarette end to the floor, grinding it out with his heel. He drew me into a hug, a painfully brotherly hug that made me far more miserable than if he had left without a backward glance. And then he went, leaving me alone to stare across the stagnant pond, while he went back to his happy little life. He was content, because he could live without anyone. I was miserable, because I could not live without him, though loving him was killing my heart.


End file.
